


the fulcrum

by ictus



Category: Batman: White Knight (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Backstory, Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Obsessive Behavior, Reverse Chronology, Yuleporn, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:21:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21832864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ictus/pseuds/ictus
Summary: Dick’s life has been marked by a string of pivotal moments, discrete instances in which the trajectory of his life has changed forever. The trapeze wire snapping was one of those moments. Meeting Bruce Wayne, another.When Jason Todd wrestles him to the ground and presses a knife to his throat, Dick finds himself thinking that this could be one of those very same moments.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Jason Todd
Comments: 41
Kudos: 294
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	1. Backwards

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seashellcolors](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seashellcolors/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, seashellcolors! I was thrilled when I saw you were requesting this pairing in the _White Knight_ universe, and you gave me the perfect opportunity to dive into the backstory between these two. This story draws on the events of _Batman: White Knight_ , but doesn't touch on the sequel, so there are no spoilers for that if you haven't read it. 
> 
> Many thanks to my betas, asuralucier and Shu!

The knife is razor-sharp where it bites into Dick’s skin, so sharp that he feels the trickle of blood before the pain even registers.

“You know the Joker did this to me,” Jason says conversationally. With Jason’s knife at his throat and his whole body bearing down on Dick’s, Dick can barely breathe, let alone respond. “He had a straight blade, like the ones that barbers use. Unfortunately for me, he didn’t have the courtesy to keep his blades as sharp as this one.” This close, Dick can see the ugly mess of scar tissue on Jason’s throat, just over the carotid. It’s anyone’s guess as to how he made it out alive.

Jason turns the knife in his hand, drawing the flat of the blade over Dick’s throat. “Maybe I should give you a souvenir of your own, and then we can match.”

Dick swallows, forcing more blood to ooze out of the wound.

“Jason—”

Jason hits him across the face with the hilt of the knife. Dick winces as pain blooms brightly across his cheekbone.

“How could you ally with him?” Jason shouts, his tone turning vicious. The knife is back at Dick’s throat, an ever-present threat in his periphery. “How can you wear his sign? How can you fight in his name?”

Dick gets his hands over Jason’s and tries to pry the blade away from his skin, but Jason’s stronger than him and his pin leaves no room to manoeuvre. He closes his eyes and wills himself to stay calm. “The Joker has been—”

“Do _not_ tell me he’s reformed.”

Dick’s eyes fly open as Jason braces his forearm across Dick’s throat, right beneath the blade. A dizzying panic sets in when Dick tries to take a breath and finds that he can’t.

“How can you defend him? After all the people he’s killed, all the lives he’s destroyed. How can you stand with him?”

A thousand excuses surface in Dick’s mind, but there’s only one truth among them. Dick grimaces, writhing against Jason’s pin, but it’s no use. Dick’s pulse is pounding in his ears. He blinks rapidly against the black spots forming in his vision. There’s no stalling Jason, no escaping his questions.

“Well? Tell me!”

Dick takes a shaky breath, feeling blood pool into the dip of his collarbone, and shouts—

“Because it was the only way to stop Bruce!”

*

Jason’s apartment is sparse, utilitarian. An unmade bed in one corner, and a precarious bookshelf stuffed with novels in another. Mismatched dining table set, battered couch. All of it over shabby carpet, singed with cigarette burns and stained with god knows what.

Jason himself is sitting at the rickety kitchen table, his gaze sharp as he studies Dick.

Dick studies him right back.

There is exactly one photo of Jason Todd in Wayne Manor, and it sits on the mantle in Bruce’s study. The boy in the photo smiling wide, holding a melting ice-cream cone like a trophy. Bruce is standing slightly behind him, his face shrouded in shadow and his hand resting on Jason’s shoulder.

Dick studies the man who sits before him, compares him to the boy in the photo, and finds the two images utterly irreconcilable. The Jason in front of him bears no resemblance to that boy; all of his childlike joy is gone, replaced by a harshness that’s painfully reminiscent of Bruce. Jason’s mouth is set in a firm line, his chin raised in defiance—as if he’s daring Dick to take his best shot. Jason is big, almost as big as Bruce, and Dick knows that if it comes to blows, he’s going to have a hard time holding his own. 

It’s Jason who first breaks the silence. “You wanted to talk. So talk.”

Dick’s played out this conversation a hundred times in his head, has it scripted down to the last word. He has a strategy: avoid all mentions of Bruce, stick to logistics. Jason is a hostile witness, and Dick is going to do everything in his power to avoid provoking him.

“How did you escape the Joker?”

Jason laughs, a hollow sound that’s dredged from the depths of his throat. Dick can already tell Jason has no intention on making this easy for him.

“You track down your long lost brother who’s been dead since you were a child, and that’s what you want to talk about?” Jason’s grin is savage. He pushes back from the table to lazily swing on his chair with a forced casualness that has Dick gritting his teeth. “How about we start with you answering one of my questions: why are you here?”

The _and not Bruce_ hangs in the silence. 

Dick carefully considers his response. “I know that Bruce didn’t always do right by you. What he did was—”

“Indefensible? Deplorable?”

Dick’s temper flares. “You’re not the only one who was hurt by him.”

“Really? You look like you got out okay.” As Jason says that, he tilts his head, baring his throat. The movement is slight, but Dick’s been trained in picking up on subtle cues. He doesn’t miss the way Jason’s calling attention to the scar on his throat. Dick doesn’t know how he got it, but he has an inkling. “Tell me something, _Dick_. After I disappeared, how long did he wait before offering you the suit? One month? Two?”

Dick flinches. It’s minute, but Jason would notice. “It wasn’t like that.”

“He didn’t even have a body to bury. How long did he look for me before he had me declared dead?”

Jason lets his chair fall back to the ground, and a second later he’s leaning across the table, close enough that Dick can feel his breath on his face. “If it were him who disappeared, I would have searched to the ends of the earth, I would have beaten up every crook to find out exactly what happened to him. But hey, why bother with any of that? Not when he already had my replacement lined up. Another good soldier, ready to march to their death.”

“I said it wasn’t like that. I had to beg to become Robin, Bruce refused me for months. Jason, you have no idea, he _mourned_ you, he never fully recovered after—”

“Aw, I didn’t know he cared,” Jason says, and there it is again: that forced carelessness, that faux nonchalance. Something about it gets under Dick’s skin. “He did well with you, though,” Jason continues. “Look at us. We even look the same. Blue eyes. Black hair. Just like Bruce. You may go by a different name these days. But you and I both know you’re just a carbon copy. Except unlike me, you weren’t smart enough to get out when you still could.”

Dick clenches his jaw. He knows he’s giving himself away, projecting his emotions as clearly as if he were shouting, but the time for civility has long since passed. “I got out,” he says curtly.

“Oh?” Jason asks with a quirk of his eyebrow. “Is that why you’re here then, running his errands for him?”

Dick already knows there will be no walking away from this without a fight; the only question is who will draw first blood. Jason looks tough, but Dick has no doubt he’s out of practice. And Dick’s never been one to shy away from a challenge.

“Bruce didn’t send me,” Dick says, rising from the table. The way Jason’s face twists tells him that the blow lands exactly as he intended. “I reached out to you because I cared, but now I see I shouldn’t have wasted my time.”

Dick turns slowly, listening out for the sound of Jason’s chair scuffing the cheap linoleum. The hand on his shoulder is completely expected, and when Jason yanks him backwards, Dick’s already turning to tackle him with his whole body.

Dick can already tell that Jason’s instincts haven’t dulled over the years, because he seems to have anticipated the attack. When Dick charges at him, Jason bows under the pressure, using Dick’s momentum to flip them around again until he’s pressing Dick into the floor with all of his weight. It’s a familiar tactic, one that Dick had learned as Robin too. A distant part of him realises Bruce must have taught Jason that same manoeuvre, just as he’d taught Dick all those years ago.

Dick finds himself knocked on his ass with Jason on top of him, pressing him into the floor. Within seconds Jason has Dick’s wrists pinned above his head, effectively immobilising him. Dick thrashes wildly for endless seconds, seeking out weakness in Jason’s pin.

But then Jason presses a knife to his throat, and Dick’s whole world becomes very still.

*

Jason Peter Todd disappeared on the 27th of April 2008, and was declared dead not two months later. His guardian Bruce Wayne held a private ceremony on the grounds of Wayne Manor, and an empty casket was lowered into the ground in a plot next to his parents’.

There has been no record of Jason’s existence since he was declared dead, no trace of Bruce Wayne’s adopted son since he disappeared under suspicious circumstances a decade ago.

Until now.

Barbara’s been developing a programme, she calls it _Oracle_. With the right subroutines, she tells Dick, it’s possible to piggyback off the state surveillance system, using everything from CCTV to traffic cameras to scan and track an individual. Jason’s details don’t exist in the GCPD database—Bruce would have seen to that. Dick knows that Bruce would have kept Jason’s prints and DNA on file, but whatever identifying information Bruce has retained is so thoroughly encrypted, even Barbara’s software can’t break it.

All Dick has to go off is a single photograph, thirteen years out of date. The smiling boy with the ice-cream cone.

All things considered, the search is pathetically easy.

Robbie Peters. DOB: April 27th 1993\. Occupation: mechanic. Last known residence is an address in the Narrows.

Dick stares at the screen, his heart in his throat. He thinks of Jason’s alias, his date of birth. Thinks of the fact that he never left Gotham. Dick wonders if all this time, Jason has been hiding in plain sight, just waiting to be found.

*

Bruce says, “There’s something you need to know.”

Bruce’s face is grave, his mouth a thin line. They’re in the Cave, and although Bruce had finished patrol hours ago, he’s still in the suit. The fact that he hasn’t removed the cowl doesn’t escape Dick’s attention.

“Jason’s alive,” Bruce says finally.

Dick’s stomach somersaults. He’s hit by a strange swooping sensation in his gut, the kind he gets when he throws himself off a skyscraper before firing off his grapple. His head fills with an incessant buzzing, and when he speaks it sounds as though it’s coming from a great distance.

“What do you mean?” he says quickly. Then, “How do you know?”

“I spoke to the Joker and he told me what happened the night he kidnapped Jason. He says he released Jason, injured but alive.” Bruce voice is inflectionless, as if he were giving a witness testimony for a case three times removed. Dick wonders how many times he’s rehearsed this.

“When did Joker tell you this?”

A beat. “The night he was arrested.”

Two months ago. Bruce waited two months before telling him this.

Dick swallows hard. “And you believe him?”

It’s the wrong question, Dick realises. Bruce would never believe the Joker based on his word alone. Bruce is a detective, and detectives deal in evidence. If Bruce believes Jason’s alive, that would mean that Bruce has proof, means that he would have tracked Jason down himself and—

“I do,” Bruce says evenly.

Dick bites the inside of his mouth, forces his hands to relax at his sides. “Where is he, then? Have you spoken to—”

“Jason has made it clear that he doesn’t want to be found.”

For a long moment Dick can barely speak, his incredulity leaving him spluttering.

“Bruce. He’s your _son._ ”

But Bruce is already turning back to the computer. “He knows where to find me,” he says in a voice of measured calm.

Dick can only stare at Bruce’s head as he pulls up this evening’s mission report. For a long time there’s nothing but the ambient sounds of the Cave: the whirl of a centrifuge, the hum of the computers, and then, from somewhere deeper, the sound of bats. But when the clack of Bruce’s typing adds to the chorus, Dick knows that sound is louder than any dismissal.

*

The cemetery at Wayne Manor is familiar in a way that Dick would prefer to ignore.

After Alfred’s funeral, Barbara stays back with Dick. He swipes a bottle of whiskey from the wake and they pass it back and forth for a while, although it quickly becomes clear that Dick’s taking the lion’s share. Alfred’s headstone is carved of white marble, standing next to three others. Two of them are for Bruce’s parents, and the third is—

“Jason Todd?” Barbara murmurs. “Who’s that?”

Dick feels a familiar hollowness in his chest, the same feeling he gets when he thinks of his parents. There’s something encroaching about it; mourning a boy he’d never met, as if that’s something he’s even entitled to. If he were honest with himself, he would question how much of his preoccupation is grief, and how much of it is the disquieting thought of _that could have been me_. But then Dick thinks of Barbara’s tight smile and Batman’s bloody gauntlets, and realises he hasn’t been honest with himself in a while.

“Jason was Robin before I was. Supposedly killed by the Joker”—Dick swallows around the lump in his throat—“but they never found the body.”

Barbara pales. “Why didn’t Bruce ever tell me?”

Dick sighs. “You know what he’s like. He’s so closed-off and Jason—Jason was like a son to him. Closer to him than I ever was.”

Barbara’s face softens. “You don’t know that. Bruce loves you like a son, too.”

Dick laughs, the sound rising acrid in his throat. “When I got older, I started reminding him more and more of Jason.” _Reminding him of everything he lost_ , is what he doesn’t say. Dick swallows down the thought with a swig of whiskey. “Now all we do is fight—it’s the only thing we have in common anymore.”

“Dick,” Barbara says quietly, and Dick already knows what’s coming next. He lets his gaze fall to Alfred’s headstone so he doesn’t have to meet her eyes. “We need to stop him. He’s going over the edge. I need your help on this one.”

Dick closes his eyes. Thinks of the dismissive way Bruce had said _I did what I had to do,_ and gives into that familiar anger. “I’m not a part of this anymore, I only came here for Alfred. If there’s a fight, then you know you can count on me. But otherwise? I’m leaving.”

Barbara grabs him by the front of his suit and shouts, “It’s a fight between us and Bruce!” Her grip is firm on his tie as she yanks him forwards, pulling him towards her so she can scream in his face. Dick’s stunned, drunk and disoriented, and he can only flounder as she draws him closer. “Alfred was Bruce’s moral bearing and without him, there’s nothing protecting the city from Batman.”

Barbara releases Dick’s tie and pushes him with so much force that he actually stumbles. Dick’s thoughts scramble to catch up with what she’s saying, the gears slowly turning as the final piece clicks into place.

“Except for us,” Dick hears himself say.

Barbara is as determined as Dick’s ever seen her. “Yeah,” she says, a little breathless. “Except for us,”

*

The Batmobile’s tyres screech through the streets as Bruce drives at breakneck speed. Dick trails him on his bike, fury coursing through his veins and settling hot in his gut, spurring him on at every turn. Bruce is being careless, reckless, and Dick realises he’s put this off for far too long.

Bruce is already at the computer by the time Dick arrives at the Cave, cowl up and gloves off. For a second Dick can barely make out Bruce under all the kevlar, just sees the huge hulking figure that the criminals, and more recently, civilians of Gotham have come to fear.

“What the hell was that?” Dick shouts.

Bruce doesn’t flinch and he doesn’t still, his fingers flying over the keys without pause. He’s entering the mission report for tonight, and Dick has a funny feeling the words _grievous bodily harm_ will be absent from his entry.

Bruce’s silence has Dick’s fury intensifying until it’s bursting out of him. “Hey, I’m talking to you!” Dick yells as he charges across the room.

Dick’s just about to grab Bruce by the shoulder, to force Bruce to look him in the eye, when Bruce finally answers. “The same thing that we’ve been doing for years,” he says shortly. “We detained a known criminal, and now Gotham is safer for it.”

Dick splutters. “Detained? You nearly put Nygma in a body bag.”

“Edward Nygma has been involved in countless acts of terrorism, culminating in harm to civilians, destruction of public property—”

“Wow, that sounds familiar.”

Bruce falls still, his hands frozen over the keypad. Dick notes the minute twitching in his fingers, as if he’s fighting the urge to ball his hands into fists. When Bruce finally speaks, it’s in a voice of forced calm.

“I did what I had to do to neutralise a threat to the city.”

“No what you _did_ was put Nygma in a full body cast for six months. I overheard the paramedics as I was leaving the scene, they’re not even sure he’ll walk again.”

“Good,” Bruce says, and Dick feels his rage reach its peak.

“Fuck Bruce, would you just—can you at least look at me?”

Bruce lets Dick grab him by the shoulder and swing his chair around so they’re facing each other. Bruce is docile, complicit, and Dick hates himself for being disappointed that he’s not fighting back. Dick takes a deep breath through his teeth, and for a second it feels like he’s jaw is clenched so hard it’s wired shut. “Bruce,” he finally manages. “Bruce, this can’t go on.”

Bruce is utterly impassive. Dick always used to say he could read Bruce, even behind the cowl. But these days, it’s getting harder. Bruce holds his gaze for several seconds, letting the tension stretch to breaking point. But Dick’s not a kid anymore; he’s past the point of being intimidated by Batman’s stern glare.

“It’s fine,” Bruce says, cold and curt and everything Dick’s come to hate about him. Bruce turns back to the computer, and Dick’s left staring foolishly at the back of his head.

“So what, that’s it? You’re just making an executive decision?”

“Yes.”

“That’s funny, because I thought you and I were supposed to be partners. Remember?”

Bruce has resumed typing, but Dick refuses to be dismissed so easily.

“No, we were never partners,” Dick continues. “I was just the kid you could count on to help clean up your mess for you. Someone who would follow you around and convince you that what you’re doing was right, that it was about _justice_.” Bruce’s fingers have stilled on the keypad, and Dick presses his advantage. “And now you’re just raising the stakes, making it more and more dangerous, until what? Until I end up like Jason?”

Bruce moves so quickly, the attack doesn’t even register. It’s not until pain is bursting bright along Dick’s jaw that he realises he’s been struck, a right hook that hits its target with brutal force. It’s too late to block the hit, too late to even catch himself before he’s falling to the floor. Bruce is towering above him, his chest rising and falling with—not exertion, with _rage_ , Dick realises.

Bruce hauls him up by the front of his uniform, and Dick thinks Bruce is about to go for another hit when he abruptly stills and releases him. Dick stumbles but maintains his footing, all of his natural grace gone in the face of how stunned he is. He gingerly raises his hand to his lip, wincing when it comes away bloody.

“Dick—”

Bruce cuts himself off, and Dick can only laugh in response. Without a word, Dick raises his hand to his face and slowly pulls off his domino. Bruce’s eyes track the movement as Dick peels off the edge and tosses it at his feet.

“I deserve better than this,” he says, unfastening his cape. It falls to the floor like a curtain. “And so did Jason.”

Bruce flinches at the mention of Jason’s name, but says nothing. Dick is bitterly unsurprised.

“Good luck finding a new Robin.” Dick roughly shoulders past Bruce as he makes to leave the Cave, not daring to look back. On his way out, he passes the case that holds Jason’s Robin uniform, and thinks for the umpteenth time, _that could have been me_.

*

“—So then I said, shouldn’t we leave this for Commissioner Gordon? But Bruce didn’t listen to me. He just grabbed the bad guys and started hitting them, even though they said they would turn themselves in.”

Dick frowns, blinking against the bright morning sun. The gardenias he brought are still a little dewy from the rain last night, and the droplets catch the light like diamonds. Alfred would kill him if he knew he’d been taking flowers from the garden, but Dick thinks he’d probably forgive him if he knew they were for Jason.

“Anyway, when we got back to the Cave I tried to bring it up again. Because we’re partners, y’know? And we’ve gotta have each other’s backs. Not just in fights, but when it comes to keeping each other in line, too. But.” Dick grimaces. “Well, you know what B’s like.”

The sun is glancing off the headstone, casting the engraving into sharp relief. Dick reads the words again, even though he’s read them countless times before.

_Jason Peter Todd. Beloved son._

Dick can’t explain why, but he much prefers _beloved son_ to _a good soldier_. In fact, Jason’s memorial case in the Cave gives him the creeps, and he always does his best to avoid it. Maybe it’s because Jason was only two years older than Dick when he died, and he’s just beginning to understand how young Jason was. Maybe it’s because every time he looks at the case in the Cave, he sees his own reflection staring back at him.

Dick closes his eyes, and thinks instead of the picture in Bruce’s study. Jason looked so happy. Dick’s heart aches with a hollow sort of pain, like an old bruise that just won’t heal.

“I wish I could have met you.” The words come out as a quiet mumble, as if he’s ashamed to admit them out loud. Dick turns his eyes to the headstone once more and says, “I always wanted a brother.”


	2. Forwards

The knife is razor-sharp where it bites into Dick’s skin, so sharp that he feels the trickle of blood before the pain even registers.

Jason looms above him, livid.

“How can you defend him? After all the people he’s killed, all the lives he’s destroyed. How can you stand with him?”

A thousand excuses surface in Dick’s mind, but there’s only one truth among them. Dick grimaces, writhing against Jason’s pin, but it’s no use. Dick’s pulse is pounding in his ears. He blinks rapidly against the black spots forming in his vision. There’s no stalling Jason, no escaping his questions.

“Well? Tell me!”

Dick takes a shaky breath, feeling blood pool into the dip of his collarbone, and shouts—

“Because it was the only way to stop Bruce!”

The pressure on Dick’s windpipe increases as Jason presses all his weight onto the forearm that’s braced across Dick’s throat—and then it’s gone.

Dick gasps for air, taking his first full breath in what seems like forever. His throat feels tender and raw, still bloody from the knife. After a moment, the spots in his vision clear to reveal Jason, still looming above him, smiling in a way that makes Dick’s stomach twist.

“Wow,” Jason says softly. “He really did a number on you, didn’t he?”

His tone is sardonic, but there’s something like pity in it too. Before Dick can think of a response, Jason’s tucking the knife into his jacket pocket and saying, “D’you want a beer?”

*

They drink out on the fire escape.

Jason’s 8th floor apartment gives them a decent view of Gotham; glittering lights that stretch all the way to the horizon, and the sea out to the east. Jason tosses Dick a wad of gauze for his cut—completely unapologetically—then passes him a beer, a Japanese brand that Dick doesn’t recognise. As Dick takes it, he’s struck by the bizarre thought that Jason’s somehow his own person; just a regular guy who has a favourite brand of beer, who goes to work, who likes to read.

Dick resolutely refuses to think about the boy in the photo.

“Nice view,” Dick says after the moment, because neither of them have spoken and he feels as though someone should. He presses the gauze to his throat and hopes his fingers don’t come away red.

Jason hums, a noncommittal sound. “After you’ve thrown yourself off Wayne Tower, everything else seems pretty tame in comparison, don’t you think?”

Dick swallows and nods. To his left, Jason takes a long, slow pull of his beer, seemingly unaware of the tension between them.

“Was he always like this?” Dick asks after a few moments.

“Bruce?” Jason asks, and Dick nods. Jason doesn’t ask him to elaborate on what he means when he says _like this_. “No,” Jason says after a moment’s contemplation. “He was always teaching me discipline. He told me there was a line, and we should never cross it. Non-lethal blows, the whole bit. If anything, he was the one holding _me_ back.”

There’s something about the sharpness of Jason’s gaze that makes Dick shiver. For the first time in his life, Dick’s forced to consider the idea that the first Robin was anything less than a hero.

“I used to watch you, you know,” Jason says quietly. “I’d been gone for six months when I heard word on the street that there was a new Robin in town.” Jason shoots him a sidelong grin, and something akin to dread curdles in Dick’s gut. “So of course I had to see for myself.”

“Jason, if I had known you were—”

“Come see Robin!” Jason says in a mock-theatrical tone. “The new and improved model! This Robin can do a quadruple somersault, but will he be clever enough to avoid falling into the clutches of the evil Joker? Or will this one end up dead like the other little birdie?”

Dick swallows around the lump in his throat. “Jason, I never meant to replace you.”

Jason laughs, but there’s a bitter edge to it. “I don’t know, Dick. You were out there wearing my colours, going by my name. I’d say you replaced me pretty good. And you _were_ good, that’s the bitch of it. I used to watch you fly around this town. Leaping from rooftops like even gravity couldn’t touch you. And when you fought”—Jason runs a hand through his hair—“you were always so quick. Fluid, you know? Like liquid. When I was Robin, I would come away from fights with bruised knuckles and a busted nose but you—you were untouchable. They just couldn’t get a hit on you.”

Dick’s face heats. “It wasn’t—I mean, my family were—”

“Acrobats, I know. That explains the quadruple somersault, but not the rest.”

Jason takes another sip of his beer, glancing at Dick out of the corner of his eye. Jason’s gaze feels like an X-ray, like he can see Dick right down to his core. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Jason knew about his parents, given how public their deaths were. But hearing Jason say it out loud is another thing entirely. Dick opens his mouth and finds nothing comes out. How can he explain to Jason that he spent his entire childhood looking up to him? That he spent years trying to follow in the footsteps of a dead boy?

Dick’s spared the effort of trying to formulate the words when Jason says, “Did Bruce ever tell you how he found me?”

Dick shakes his head, and Jason mutters something along the lines of, “Of course he didn’t.” Jason’s gaze turns to the skyline and he says, “I was born not too far from here. After my mom died I couldn’t keep the apartment so I ended up on the streets.”

Dick’s mouth goes very dry. The streets of Gotham are notoriously unsafe, and that goes doubly for the East End. “That must have been hard,” he says after a pause.

“Thanks, but I don’t need your pity. It wasn’t long before I was stealing to get by. One day I got caught by the Bat himself, and instead of turning me into the cops, he adopted me.” Jason breaks into a laugh. “How fucked up is that? What kind of guy goes around plucking kids off the streets and teaches them to become vigilantes?”

Dick chooses his next words carefully. “It sounds like he was trying to give you a second chance.”

Jason snorts. “Yeah, and look where that got me.” He rubs his hand absently over his throat. Dick’s not even sure he realises he’s doing it. “Anyway, I mentioned it because you and I, we’re different. I was a street fighter, a brawler. When I was Robin, the costume was armoured and heavy, but when you became Robin—”

“—He made it lighter,” Dick says, the memory suddenly resurfacing. The suit’s original design had restricted his movement too much, hampering his agility. Bruce had needed to rework the whole suit from head to toe, lighter kevlar that left Dick vulnerable to attack, but gave him freedom of mobility.

“Exactly. Me? I was just the test run. The failed experiment. But you? You were Robin as he should have been. Weightless, untouchable. In the end, Bruce was probably glad I disappeared so he could start over on something better.”

“That’s not true,” Dick says quickly.

“Oh?” Jason asks, quirking an eyebrow. He takes a sip of his beer and when he sets it down there’s something like defiance in his eyes, as if he’s challenging Dick to disagree.

“Jason, Bruce loved you as if you were his own son. I was there only months after you died, I saw how it affected him. He would spend hours in the Cave, tracking the Joker, making sure he stayed in Arkham. After you died, he became _brutal_ , always taking it too far—”

“Not far enough, though.”

Dick freezes. “What do you mean?”

“Well the Joker’s still alive, isn’t he?”

Dick falters. He rapidly feels as though he’s losing the thread of the conversation, as if it were all unspooling before him. They’re heading into dangerous territory here. Dick takes a gamble and approaches from a different angle.

“Jason. I _know_ that Bruce is desperate to see you, that he hasn’t thought about anything else since he learned that you were alive. If you could just—”

“Fuck off,” Jason says cheerfully.

Dick blinks. “Uh, Jason—”

“No really, get the fuck out.”

Jason’s smile is fixed, but Dick doesn’t miss the way his knuckles have gone white where he’s gripping his beer. He tries again.

“Jason, I just think that—”

“Get the fuck out of my house or else I’ll throw you over the edge myself.”

Dick hesitates. With his grapple holstered in his belt, it’s tempting to call Jason’s bluff. But to do so would mean squandering any goodwill he’s garnered so far. The last thing he wants is to make an enemy of Jason.

“Okay,” Dick says slowly. “I’ll go.” Dick rises to his feet, unsteady. The gauze has stemmed most of the blood, but he’s still slightly dizzy. He supposes it’s too much to ask for a suture kit to go.

“Oh and Dick?” Dick pauses, half-turning to meet Jason’s steely gaze. “Don’t come back here again,” he says, and Dick has a funny feeling that he means it.

*

Dick gives it three days.

Three days of avoiding the Narrows on patrol, of skirting the edges of what could be broadly considered Jason’s territory. Three days of trying to push their encounter from his mind.

But somehow on the third day, Dick finds himself perched on the railing of Jason’s fire escape. He’d stashed his GTO jacket with his bike, and he suddenly regrets that he hadn’t changed into civvies on the way. Seeing the Nightwing suit is sure to provoke a reaction from Jason, GTO emblem or no, and Dick’s weighing up the pros and cons of leaving to change when something inside Jason’s apartment catches his eye.

It’s nothing. No furniture, none of Jason’s belongings, nothing. Dick pries open the window and slips inside and sure enough, Jason’s cleared out. Gone without a trace. Dick scours the apartment for clues, hints of where he might have disappeared to. He half-expects a note, something sardonic along the lines of, _I told you not to come back here_ , but the place is empty.

Dick pinches the bridge of his nose, right where the domino sits, and feels something like grief expand in his chest.

*

“No,” Barbara says flatly.

Dick falters. “C’mon Babs, we’ve used it before.”

“That was different.”

“How?”

“When we used _Oracle_ to track Jason, we didn’t know for sure that he didn’t want to be found. Now, we do.”

“But—”

“I’m not doing it,” she says, and Dick knows her resolve to be absolute. “ _Oracle_ is a powerful tool, easily misused. I’m not going to allow you to use it to stalk—”

“I’m not stalking him Barbara, I’m trying to help him.”

Barbara’s mouth thins into a line, and for a second it’s so painfully reminiscent of Bruce that Dick is actually caught off-guard. She holds firm for a few seconds before her expression melts into something a bit more sympathetic. “Dick, you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped. I know that Jason meant a lot to you growing up, but he’s his own person now, and you can’t force him to be a part of your life. Whatever it is you need to do to let this go, you _need_ to do it, and you need to do it fast. We have bigger problems to be worrying about at the moment.”

Dick thinks of the Joker escaping Arkham, thinks of Bruce willing to go public with his identity, and he knows she’s right. But then he thinks about Jason, thinks about, _you were Robin as he should have been,_ and everything else seems to fall away.

“Okay,” Dick says after a pause. “I’ll drop it,” he adds, and wonders if she can tell that he’s lying.

*

Dick spends the following weeks tracking Jason the old-fashioned way. There’s enough data from his original _Oracle_ search to get him going. Dick checks out the dives in Jason’s old neighbourhood, asks his neighbours, but every time he comes up empty. When he stops by the garage where Jason works, his boss tells him he hasn’t seen him in over a week.

“Kick his ass for me if you see him, that kid still owes me three hundred in cash advances.”

Dick nods. “I’ll do that.”

“’Course in this part of town, you disappear without a trace—it probably means that you’ve got _got_ , if you catch my drift.”

Dick forces a tight smile. “I’m sure he’s fine.”

*

Two months after Alfred’s passing, Dick visits his grave in Wayne Manor. Since his encounter with Jason, Dick’s been able to think of little else, and it if it hadn’t been for Barbara he might have forgotten the date entirely.

When Dick arrives at the cemetery, he’s surprised to see a bouquet of daisies already laid before headstone. Dick frowns as he crouches down to place his own bouquet of white roses. His are store-bought and not Alfred’s favourite. Dick had racked his brain, but he couldn’t recall Alfred’s favourite flower, although he was certain it wasn’t roses. He’d been meaning to ask Barbara.

The daisies are still wet on the stem despite the warm sun, as if they were placed here very recently. Bruce is out of town on business, so it can’t have been him and Barbara—Barbara would have bought lilies, he’s sure of it. As he rises to his feet, his eyes catch on Jason’s headstone, and something slots into place.

Dick knows that Alfred loved Jason like a son, that he felt Jason’s loss more acutely than even Bruce, and that he carried that grief with him for the rest of his life. It’s not unlikely that Jason would be similarly affected by Alfred’s passing.

Dick tries to imagine Jason sneaking into Wayne Manor, his old home that he can’t ever return to, just to pay his respects for Alfred. He imagines Jason sitting before Alfred’s grave as Dick used to sit before Jason’s, and laying his flowers before the headstone. Why daisies? Were those Jason’s favourite? Did he pluck them from the gardens as Dick used to pluck the gardenias?

A faint rustle from the hedges snaps Dick out of his thoughts. A thrill of adrenaline hits him like a lightning bolt, sends his heart racing into overdrive. Cautiously, Dick makes his way to the hedge, heart thudding with the prospect of seeing Jason again.

But when Dick draws level with the hedge there’s nothing there, save for a single, freshly-cut daisy.

*

In the weeks that follow, Dick spends more and more time patrolling the Narrows than he ever spent during his time as Robin. Occasionally, he’ll catch movement in his periphery, a glimpse of something too dark and too solid to be a shadow. But it always vanishes as quickly as it appears, eluding Dick at every turn.

Sometimes at night, Dick thinks of the way Jason had said, _I used to watch you, you know._ Thinks of how heavy Jason’s gaze had been, falling upon Dick like something tangible, and how it had made his heart rachet up a notch. Dick thinks of Jason watching him now—at the cemetery, patrolling the Narrows—and shivers at the thought.

With Bruce gone, it’s up to Dick and Barbara to take care of Gotham. It’s a task that fits very neatly with Dick’s agenda. “Alright, how about you take Chinatown and Tricorner, and I’ll do Burnley and the Narrows?”

Even from behind the mask, Batgirl’s raised eyebrow is all too pronounced. “You’ll take the Narrows, huh? Listen N, I thought we agreed you’d drop this.”

“I have dropped it,” Dick says far too quickly.

Barbara’s resultant pause tells him she doesn’t buy it for a second. “Okay, good. Because you’re not going to find him if he doesn’t want to be found.”

 _Yeah, no thanks to you_ , Dick wants to say. But instead he just says, “Comm me if you run into trouble,” and readies his grapple.

*

Dick makes it back to Midtown hours later, pent-up adrenaline still pulsing under his skin. Tonight had been a bust, nothing but a couple of attempted muggings. Low-level stuff that the cops would be taking care of if they weren’t too cowardly to patrol the Narrows. Dick’s past the point of lying to himself; he knows most of his frustration comes from the fact that tonight was another failed attempt, another instance where he set out to find Jason, and came up empty-handed. The thought is like an itch under his skin that he can’t quite scratch, a restlessness in his bones that sets him on edge.

Dick’s apartment is as cold and unwelcoming as ever. He quickly shucks his GTO jacket and his domino, then makes his way to the kitchen. Unlike his place in Blüdhaven, this apartment is sparse, just somewhere to crash so he doesn’t have to stay at the Manor when he’s in town. There’s not much in the way of furniture, and Dick spends a long time staring into his empty fridge as if he could will food into existence.

Suddenly, Dick hears a familiar voice from somewhere behind him.

“You know, you should consider locking your windows.”

Dick has his escrima in his hands in a fraction of a second. He crouches into a fighting stance, pivoting to meet his intruder as electricity crackles along their length.

It’s Jason. Of course it is.

“I live on the fifth floor,” Dick says automatically.

Jason’s smirk is predatory. He takes a few incautious steps towards Dick, clearly unconcerned by the prospect of being electrocuted.

“That’s not much of a deterrent for people like us.” 

Jason comes to rest a couple of feet before Dick, just out of range of his sticks. He looks thoroughly insouciant with his arms crossed over his chest, casually leaning against Dick’s refrigerator door.

“Why are you here?” Dick asks. It may be the last question on his mind, but right now it’s probably the safest.

“Why have you been stalking me?” Jason counters easily.

“I haven’t been—”

“Bullshit,” Jason says, and Dick feels himself falter a little.

“I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Jason laughs at that, tossing his head back. The movement draws Dick’s eyes to the scar on his throat. _Maybe I should give you a souvenir of your own, and then we can match_. Dick’s own throat stings with the phantom pain of Jason’s knife against his skin, and he ups the charge on his escrima sticks.

“Dick I don’t think I’ve been okay a single day in my life. Not since Bruce found me, anyway.”

Dick swallows hard. Jason’s eyes are shining as if he’s just told a very funny joke, and Dick feels wrongfooted somehow, like he’s trying to put the pieces together in a puzzle where none of the edges line up.

“But really,” Jason continues, “let’s get to the real reason why you’ve been stalking me.” Jason pulls out a knife from the inside pocket of his leather jacket, and begins idly picking his nails with it. It’s that faux nonchalance again, but Dick reads the implicit threat for what it is. This time, the question is not who will be the first to draw blood, but when. “I think you’re obsessed with me,” Jason says, and Dick feels something uncomfortable twist in his gut. “In fact, I think you’ve been obsessed with me for most of your life. And don’t get me wrong, I’m very flattered and everything, but—”

Jason anticipates the strike a fraction of a second too late, and he doesn’t quite manage to block the blow in time. The end of Dick’s escrima collides with his cheekbone, the electric shock enough to send Jason to the ground convulsing.

Dick hauls him up by his jacket collar and slams him against the fridge door, escrima braced across his throat. It’s not enough to cut off his air, but Jason has no chance of escape, especially if Dick charges them again.

“Oooh, tingly,” Jason laughs, wriggling against Dick’s pin to test how much give he has. “We didn’t have anything like that when I was Robin.”

“Shut up,” Dick grits out.

Jason cocks an eyebrow. “Oh yeah? Are you sure you want to be speaking to me like that?”

Dick feels a slight pressure just below his sternum. He looks down to see the tip of Jason’s blade is pressed against the kevlar of his suit. Right now, it’s enough to hold him off. But if Jason exerts any more pressure—

“It seems we’re at a stalemate,” Jason says lightly, as if this were a friendly game of chess.

“Seems so.”

“I have to say, I’ve been tortured within an inch of my life, so there’s not a lot you could do that would frighten me.”

Dick’s chest aches with a familiar pain, the same one he used to get when he visited Jason’s grave or passed by his memorial in the Cave. “I don’t want to fight you,” he says eventually.

Jason licks his lips. “No? So what is it that you want to do, then?”

Despite the blade between their bodies, Jason finds a way to roll his hips against Dick’s. Jason’s all provocation, and the press of his body against Dick’s is nothing short of vulgar. And Dick knows he’s just looking for a reaction, is just goading Dick into a fight. Just wants to see how far he can push Dick before he breaks.

But if this is a game, Dick won’t be the first to back down.

“This,” Dick says, then presses his mouth to Jason’s.

It’s too artless, too aggressive to be a proper kiss. Jason gasps, and the satisfaction of catching him off-guard makes Dick’s cock throb where it’s pressed against Jason’s thigh. Dick takes it as an invitation to fuck his tongue into Jason’s mouth, holding his jaw steady with one hand while his other keeps Jason pinned against the fridge. Jason groans, a guttural sound that’s impossibly gratifying, and Dick knows he’s going to remember that sound for the rest of his life, that it’s going to become a staple in his jerk-off fantasies from here on out.

“Wow,” Jason says when they finally break apart. “Didn’t think you’d actually do that.”

Dick’s heart seems to freeze in his chest. For a second, he feels suspended in time, completely unable to move. He’s acutely aware of every part where their bodies are touching: Jason’s thigh between his legs, Dick’s hand at Jason’s throat, and right now Jason’s knife is the only thing separating them. This is a pivotal moment, a moment where the scales can tip in one of two directions. Either Jason will gut him and proceed to beat the shit out of him, or Jason will kiss him back and Dick will get his hands under his shirt, press their bodies together until there’s no space left between them.

Privately, Dick is hoping for the latter.

“Gotta hand it to you Replacement, you’ve got grit.” Jason’s eyes fall to Dick’s mouth for half a second, and that’s the only warning Dick gets before Jason’s grabbing him by the back of his head and kissing him hard.

Distantly, Dick hears the sound of his escrima sticks falling to the floor in his haste to draw Jason’s body as close to his as possible. Dick doesn’t know what Jason does with the knife, and something about that should bother him. Some distant part of his brain is telling him that Jason is a threat, that he’s highly trained and just as unstable, that Dick can’t afford to let his guard down here. But when Jason sucks on his tongue and grinds their hips together, all of that chatter becomes secondary, fading away into white noise as Dick loses himself in Jason’s touch.

Any illusion of Dick having the upper hand dissolves the second that Jason gets a hand on his hip and begins walking Dick backwards in the direction of the bedroom. Dick allows himself to be led, and when Jason pushes him onto the bed, Dick allows that too. Dick has only a second to get his bearings before Jason’s on top of him again, bringing their mouths together and running his hands down Dick’s sides.

Jason’s just moving to straddle him when Dick feels a slight pressure at his throat.

“It’s anyone’s guess how you made it as Robin when you let your guard down so easily.” Jason’s tone is light, as if he’s commenting on the weather. There’s something sharp at Dick’s throat, and Dick doesn’t need to see the flash of silver in his periphery to know that it’s Jason’s knife. Dick squirms beneath him, but succeeds only in grinding his cock against Jason’s ass. 

Above him, Jason’s smile widens. “Déjà vu getting to you? Remember how I said I wanted us to match?”

Dick closes his eyes. “You wouldn’t.”

“I _could_ ,” Jason says, pressing the flat of his blade over Dick’s carotid. Dick is pinned beneath Jason’s gaze, his body, his blade, and for one breathless moment Dick thinks he might actually go through with it.

“But I won’t,” Jason concedes eventually. Instead, he grabs the neck of Dick’s uniform and slices through his kevlar vest as if it were rice paper. Dick’s chest is bared within seconds, his Nightwing emblem torn in two, and there’s something symbolic there that Dick doesn’t want to dwell on. Not when Jason’s on top of him, his mouth just inches away and there for the taking.

So Dick takes.

He pulls Jason down on top of him, arching up to meet him halfway. Jason smiles against his mouth and bites hard on Dick’s lip. Dick gasps and Jason just kisses him deeper, as if he’s trying to chase the taste of copper out of Dick’s mouth. Dick gets his hands under Jason’s shirt, wanting to _feel_ him, but Jason bats him away almost instantly.

“Don’t,” Jason says.

Dick falters. There’s no smirk in Jason’s smile, no laughter in his eyes; just a cold harshness that leaves Dick feeling chastised.

“Okay,” Dick says, and it sounds like an apology. “What do you want?”

Jason pushes himself upright, repositioning most of his weight on Dick’s lap, and the movement calls into focus how desperately hard Dick is right now. Jason licks his lips very slowly, runs his hands over Dick’s clothed hips and says, “Take these off.”

It’s a struggle to work his way out of his uniform pants, especially when Jason insists on staying right where he is. Jason cocks an eyebrow when his pants get caught on his boots, and Dick finds himself increasingly flustered under his scrutiny.

“I thought acrobats were supposed to be flexible?”

“Fuck you. Your turn now.”

Dick’s pulse is hammering in his throat. A part of him wonders if this is all part of the game Jason’s playing, as if he’s pushing Dick just to see how far he’ll bend. _It’s anyone’s guess how you made it as Robin when you let your guard down so easily._ Dick takes a deep breath as the silence stretches until finally, Jason relents.

He slides off Dick—smoothly, sinuously—and begins to undo his boots. Unhurriedly, as if he has all the time in the world, as if he’s the one who’s holding all the cards. Given that Dick’s splayed out naked on the bed, his own cock heavy and leaking on his stomach, Dick can probably concede that’s the case.

After what feels like an eternity, Jason finally kicks off his boots and unbuttons his pants. He undoes the zipper slowly, baring his skin to Dick inch by inch, hooking his thumbs into the waistband and drawing them over his hips.

He isn’t wearing any underwear. Dick rapidly reassesses the possibility that Jason _didn’t_ come here looking for a fight.

“Something you want to say?” Jason asks as he steps out of his pants.

Even in the dim light, Dick can see the crisscross of scars that mar Jason’s thighs, deep purple gashes that didn’t heal quite right. Dick has his own collection of scars from his years of crimefighting, but they look like scratches and scrapes compared to these.

“Well?” Jason asks with a raised eyebrow. His hand drifts between his legs as he takes himself in hand, touching himself slowly.

Dick swallows and shakes his head.

“Good,” Jason says, giving himself one last tug before joining Dick on the bed again. Jason’s weight feels even better on top of him now that there’s skin on skin contact. Dick reaches out to touch Jason then hesitates, an abortive movement that leaves his hand suspended in mid-air.

Jason laughs at that, then takes Dick’s hand and brings it to his mouth. He licks two broad strokes across Dick’s palm, then brings Dick’s hand down to his own cock. Dick’s fingers curl around him instinctively, and it feels incredible to take Jason in hand, to watch his eyes fall closed as Dick’s spit-slicked hand glides over his cock.

“Mmm, now you’re getting it,” Jason murmurs. Sweat has begun to bead on his brow, and Dick thinks he must be sweltering under his leather jacket, but it doesn’t seem to be coming off any time soon. Jason’s hips are twitching of their own accord, an irregular rhythm as Jason chases the friction of Dick’s hand, and every movement has Dick’s cock grinding across the cleft of his ass in a way that would be really fucking tempting if Dick weren’t so sure that Jason would never allow it.

“Where’s your lube?” Jason asks. Dick’s brain stutters as he tries to process the question. Jason smiles down at him very indulgently.

“Top drawer,” he bites out, his dick throbbing at the thought of Jason working him open and slowly sinking into him. “There are condoms in there too.”

“Such a boy scout,” Jason says as he rifles through the drawer, but he tosses a foil packet on Dick’s chest without further complaint.

Jason straddles Dick’s hips again, and Dick’s left biting back a gasp at the renewed friction. Jason catches it of course, because Jason catches _everything_ , because Dick is naked and vulnerable beneath him and there’s nothing he can do to conceal himself.

“Enjoying yourself?” Jason asks as he squeezes lube onto his fingertips.

“No complaints just yet.”

Slowly, Dick extracts one of his legs from underneath Jason, drawing it up to his chest and hooking his arm under his knee. It feels obscene, holding himself open like this and baring himself to Jason’s hungry gaze. But Dick wants this more than anything, and now’s not the time to be shy. He’s already thinking of Jason’s hands, broad and strong. He’s thinking of the way his fingers are going to feel pressing into him and touching him from the inside, and how his cock is going to feel that much better.

Jason’s voice abruptly cuts off Dick’s train of thought. “Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the view. But aren’t you being a bit presumptuous?”

Dick looks up from where he’s bent in half, locks eyes with Jason, and feels is mouth fall open on a gasp. Jason is reaching down between his own legs, impossibly slowly, to press two slick fingers into himself. Dick is enraptured, transfixed by the point at which Jason’s fingers are disappearing as he slowly fucks himself open. Jason’s smirk becomes somehow even more self-satisfied. At this point, his gaze can only be described as a leer, and when he winks at Dick it’s simultaneously the sexiest and most aggravating thing he’s ever seen.

“Go on then, if you’re so eager to use one.” Jason nods his head in the direction of Dick’s chest, not breaking his rhythm for a single second, and it takes Dick a moment to realise he’s talking about the condom. Dick tears open the foil and rolls it on in record time, and Jason’s free hand joins his on his cock the instant he’s finished, smearing lube over the head and along the length.

Jason doesn’t ask Dick if he’s ready, and he doesn’t ask him if he wants to change positions. He just grabs the base of Dick’s erection and slowly sinks down. The pressure is incredible, Jason taking him inch by inch, his muscles clenching and relaxing as he works himself open on Dick’s cock.

Jason lets out a low _fuck_ once he’s taken Dick all the way, and it sounds so uninhibited, so unrestrained, that it might be the most genuine thing Dick’s ever heard him say.

“Jason,” Dick whispers in response, and he can’t help it. He reaches out to touch Jason, his fingers splayed over Jason’s broad, scarred thigh. Dick is shocked when Jason allows it. In fact, Dick can feel Jason respond to it, can feel the way he tightens around Dick when Dick grabs his thigh, can see the way his cock leaks onto Dick’s stomach when Dick strokes his hand down the small of his back.

When Jason sinks down all the way, he’s—for once—utterly speechless. His mouth is open but no words escape, his lips parted as he breathes shallowly. His thighs are straining with the effort of holding himself up, sending a slight tremble through his entire body.

Slowly, so as to telegraph his intentions, Dick draws his hand up the outside of Jason’s thigh, feeling the ridges of countless scars beneath his fingertips, then up to the hollow of his hipbone. Jason’s eyes fall closed when Dick closes a loose fist around his cock, not squeezing or stroking, just holding him.

“Yes?” Dick murmurs.

Jason’s eyes fly open. “ _Fuck_ yes.”

Dick brings Jason off like that, with slow even strokes, as Jason writhes on top of him. The desire to grab Jason’s hips and fuck up into his eager body is almost impossible to resist, but the feeling of Jason clenching around him on every upstroke is unlike anything else. As Jason gets closer, he begins to grind down, fucking himself on Dick’s cock as he chases his orgasm.

“God if you— _ah._ ” Jason cuts himself off with a breathless laugh. “If you had told me all those years ago that one day you’d end up fucking me senseless, I woulda laughed in your face.”

Dick thinks about all the time he spent at Jason’s grave, and is struck by a similar feeling.

“Man, I _hated_ you,” Jason says, and Dick can only moan as Jason begins to ride him in earnest, fucking himself so hard that the whole bed shakes with it.

“I—” Dick starts, but the words die in his throat. What can he say to that? That while Jason loathed him, Dick felt the opposite? That he spent his childhood worried he’d never live up to Jason’s example? Or that he spent years living in fear of what would happen if he did?

Dick bites back the confession and instead grips Jason even harder, his pace relentless as he jerks Jason in time with his thrusts. He can’t explain why, but he’s desperate for Jason to come before him, that if he does then that would somehow mean that Dick has _won_. So the next time Dick fucks up into Jason, he’s sure to angle his hips just so, and when a strangled groan is torn from Jason’s throat, Dick knows that he’s close.

Jason lets out a litany of curses as Dick drives him over the edge, and when Jason finally comes wet and hot over Dick’s stomach, Dick’s satisfaction is palpable. Jason clenches around him as he shudders through his orgasm, squeezing Dick tightly as if he’s trying to make Dick come from this alone, and it would be a near fucking thing if Dick weren’t so determined to hold off.

“Christ,” Jason says with feeling. His hair’s sticking to his forehead with sweat, and his eyes are shining in the darkness. _We even look the same: blue eyes, black hair._ That’s what Jason had said the night they met. The memory makes Dick shiver.

“Don’t tell me”—Jason gasps as Dick runs his thumb over Jason’s oversensitive cockhead—“don’t tell me you’re done just yet.”

Dick releases Jason’s cock and runs both his hands up Jason’s thighs, satisfied when he doesn’t recoil. “Not by a mile,” Dick says, and begins a slow, rolling grind up into Jason’s body.

With Jason fucked out and still pliant from his orgasm, it’s easy for Dick to drive his body into Jason’s. Short, shallow thrusts that have Jason bouncing on his cock, and have Dick chasing his own end. Jason lets out a tiny gasp with every thrust, sensitive as he is, and all the little noises he makes only get Dick that much hotter. It’s not long before Dick’s grip tightens on Jason’s hips and he’s artlessly thrusting into him, his pleasure reaching a crescendo.

Dick doesn’t moan Jason’s name when he comes, but only just.

*

Afterwards, they lie together side by side in the darkness. Jason has finally divested himself of his jacket, and judging by the _thud_ it had made as it hit the ground, Dick would be willing to guess it conceals more than a few weapons. The T-shirt stays on though, and so far Jason has resisted all attempts for Dick to get his hands underneath it.

With Dick’s face pressed against Jason’s shoulder, his arm heavy around Jason’s waist, and only a thin layer of cotton separating them, it seems somehow easier for Dick to say what’s on his mind.

“After tonight,” he whispers into the darkness, “are you going to disappear again?”

Jason’s reply comes without hesitation. “Yes,” he says simply.

Dick’s heart is a lead weight in his chest. His breath catches in his throat, and he struggles to keep his breathing even, knowing that Jason’s tuned into it. Quiet falls again, and for a long time the room is blanketed by a heavy silence.

It takes Dick by surprise when Jason speaks again.

“When I do”—he pauses a beat—“will you look for me?”

“Yes,” Dick replies just as quickly.

Jason lets out a breath, and for a second Dick swears he feels Jason relax against him, if only a little bit. 

**Author's Note:**

> As far as I know there's no canon basis for Jason liking daisies, but it's been one of my headcanons ever since I saw [this gorgeous art by Lightning Strikes](https://twitter.com/LStrikesArt/status/821667640469057536). With that said, the concept of Jason being a mechanic was taken from _Batman (2016)_ #45-7.
> 
> The Dick that we see in the _White Knight_ universe seems to be more stoic and anger-prone than his main continuity counterpart, and that's an aspect that I really leaned into here. Ditto with this version of Bruce being colder and more vicious. As we see very little of Jason in _White Knight_ , I mostly drew on Winick's _Under the Red Hood_ characterisation.
> 
> You can also find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/scansionictus).


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